Hello,

TL:DR Atmospheric scientist with knowledge of cli, python want change to a SRE job

Let me explain my background, I am M.Sc in atmospheric science with a few publications in the field, during my studies I work most of my time working with cli tools so I am confident with shell and cli tools, pipelines, stdout, stderr, tmux, etc. I worked using numerical model that you need to compile, this teach me tools like makefiles, modules and cronjobs to did it operational. I have experience with python and other scientific languages like R, Matlab. During my free time took some course of docker. Even I set up a Nginx webpage that I leave to die for lack of time or setup a raspberry pi to download “linux isos” using docker.

I really enjoy the automation of process, and help other colleagues to setup and install the environment to work.

I know my lack of networking, monitoring, and I’m not sure if my self taught skills (science standards) are comparable with a CS worker.

I want to learn or get the certification needed to get a SRE job to mid 2024.

Any advice, course or certication to help me to get in the road?

  • bignavy@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I have some experience using git and svn, but really never work in collaboration with others, in my current work we used but only git without external service. Just to keep track of the personal work.

    No this is great in and of itself - what I would tell you is to treat your github projects, even if you’re the sole contributor, like you’re working on a team. Checkout a feature branch, complete your code, then PR it into main/master/release/whatever, even if you’re the one doing the code review for yourself. Even if you don’t get to experience other devs (inevitably borking what you’re working on) in the codebase at the same time, it’ll give you a better idea of what the workflow should look like.

    I have a “software engineer” job in a research institution, is only the title because I’m a research assistant most of the time with some dev time. The problem is there is no grow and the founding is through a international project, so the time is fixed.

    My pay is not so high, is a EU salary in a semi-public institution, tho the pay is lower that the equivalent in the industry, but I’m above the average of at county level, I’ll consider a paycut at least I could still pay the rent and past time with my family.

    This all makes the SRE part more understandable and more within reach. I wouldn’t lead with, “I don’t have any dev experience”; I would lead with “I’ve been a software engineer for x years, specializing in atmospheric modeling.” Whoever is interviewing you will probably dig and figure out that you were a solo developer, but…you were still a software dev, and the first job in this industry is way harder than the next couple. Lean into that - you have the job title, you have the resume, you’re looking to take ‘the next step’ into SRE/DevOps, because as a solo-dev, you had to handle all that stuff yourself, and you figured out that you liked it and were good at it.

    We’ve all been the new guy trying to break into the field - pay it forward after you land that first SRE gig.